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“Yes, Heath. I’m fine, I promise!” Cat insisted for the fourth or fifth time since the start of their conversation. I have exams to focus on anyway, I won’t even have time to think about it. You just worry about school, okay?”
Through the receiver she could hear her little sister’s uncomfortable breaths.
“But what…”
“No buts”, Cat interrupted her. “Please, just believe me.”
Heather sighed on the other side of the line. “Okay. But if anything happens, and I mean anything at all, you know you can call any time, right? Even in the middle of the night. I don’t need sleep that badly anyway.”
“The same goes for you”, Cat replied. The two of them were silent for a while, Cat walking briskly while Heather was most likely sprawled out over her bed at home. After a while Heather’s voice came thinly through the receiver again.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too, Heath. You and dad both. Be there for each other, ok? I’m sure he misses mum just as much as we do, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.”
“I will”, Heather answered with a brittle voice.
“Take care, Cat.”
“You too.”
With that, Cat hung up just when she walked around the corner of the supermarket. She put her phone back into her pocket and was just about to enter, when she felt a strange tingling at the back of her neck. Was she being watched?
She stopped and turned around. On the other side of the street was a little park, but it only held two trees, three bushes and one bench. Hardly enough to properly hide in, unless they had somehow managed to climb into the treetop.
Otherwise, the street was completely empty. Just to be sure, she waited for a few seconds and listened if she could hear anything. Finally, she gave up and shook her head. Her mind must’ve been playing tricks on her. After all, the anniversary of her mum’s death was affecting her deeply, even if she hadn’t wanted to admit it to Heather.
Still a bit spooked she turned around and went to get the milk and bread she had come for.
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Vincent had followed Catherine for half of the day. “Just to make sure she was okay”, he told himself. Of course, that was the same thing he had told himself on her birthday, not so long ago. But it wasn’t that odd for him to check up on her today, was it? After all, her mother did die exactly one year ago. And it had been Muirfields fault, which made him feel like it was his responsibility to make sure Catherine was okay.
And then there was also the fact that he might be just a tiny bit in love with her. But that wasn’t why he was here. No, he would never leave the loft for something like that. At least that’s what he told himself.
A few moments after Cat had entered the supermarket, Vincent checked if anyone else was around, who could possibly see him and then jumped out of the tree, landing smoothly and in perfect silence in the frost-covered grass of the park. With a soft yet confident steps he walked across the street an entered the supermarket too.
It was a tiny store, packed full of shelves and stacks of boxes, which made it easy to hide there. To be safe, Vincent still put on his hood to cover his face. He doubted there were any security cameras positioned in a way to properly capture anything except for maybe the register, but he couldn’t take any risks.
He quickly looked around and found Cat standing in front of the chocolate bars. She had a milk carton in one hand and three different bars in the other. From the looks of it, she was trying to decide which one of them she should get, without actually wanting to eat any of them.
A sudden jolt went through her and hurriedly she put the bars back and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her brows furrowed when she read the caller ID. How was it possible that worried or confused expressions always just made her look even more beautiful, Vincent wondered.
“Claire? What is it? I thought you were visiting your cousin over the weekend”, Cat answered the phone.
Claire – Cat’s roommate – seemed to explain the situation, while Cat just nodded a few times, usually accompanied by a “Hm”, “Yeah” or “Oh no”. Her eyes kept scanning the chocolate bar shelf.
“No, that’s no problem at all, I’m actually at the supermarket right now for that, I’ll just get more of it… No, it’s fine, really. See you later then, bye.” She hung up and let out a deep sigh. Without looking, she put her phone back into her pocket and then determinedly grabbed two of the chocolate bars she had had in her hand before. A Hershey’s and a Snickers.
Abruptly, she turned in Vincent’s direction and started walking towards him with quick steps He barely managed to get to the opposite side of the aisle and hide behind the stack of boxes there.
Cat stepped out from between the shelves and hesitantly came to a halt. Her eyes wandering from one side of the store to the other. She was clearly looking for something, but her mind must have been somewhere else. After a few more times looking from one end to the other her face suddenly lit up when she spotted the bread section. Although, section wasn’t the best term for it, it was really just a handful of boxes with a couple of different breads and bread rolls. Cat picked the biggest loaf they had, put it into one of the prepared plastic bags and went to the register to pay. The cashier was a grey-haired, old man, as thin as a twig, who was chewing gum that smelled suspiciously like nicotine. He scanned the products, then pointed to the shelf at his back, which held tobacco, newspapers and magazines.
“Newspaper?”, he asked in a tone that could’ve only been considered friendly if your usual social contact was limited to bullies or malicious criminals. Cat shook her head, but glanced at the shelf nonetheless.
“That’ll be seven dollars”, the cashier grumbled. Cat didn’t show any signs of hearing him, she just stood there, stock-still, her eyes fixated on something in the shelf he had pointed at. Her face had the colour of the milk she was about to buy.
“Hello? You okay? You have to pay if you want to take that with you.” The man waved his hand in front of Cat’s eyes to get her attention. Cat flinched and turned her head back to the cashier, her eyes wide as if she’d just seen a ghost.
“Yes…”, she mumbled. Hurriedly, she took a ten-dollar bill out of her purse, put it on the counter and grabbed her milk carton and the chocolate bars.
“That’s fine”, she said to the cashier, nodding slightly to the money and then almost ran out of the store.
“Ey, Miss, your bread”, the cashier shouted at her, but she was already out of the door and was seemingly not paying close attention to her surroundings.
Vincent kept hiding behind his stack of boxes, unsure of what he should do. Finally, he gave himself a nudge and came out of his hideout. The cashier had never seen him before, and with the hood covering his face, there was no way he would’ve been able to recognize him even if he did.
“I’ll bring her the bread…” His eyes found the spot Cat had stared at before fleeing the store. It was a newspaper with an article about a woman getting shot in a parking lot. Of course. Combined with this already horribly anniversary, Cat must have been doubly reminded of the emotions she had felt in that parking lot a year ago.
“… she’s been having a very bad day and something here must’ve triggered her”, he finished his sentence.
“Oh yeah?” The man eyed him sceptically. “How do I know you don’t just want the bread for yourself? I didn’t see you talk to that girl, why would you even know her?”
Vincent sighed, not in the mood to make up a story.
“Look, she gave you more than enough for an extra bread. If I just take it with me and she comes back later, asking for it, just give her a second one. You’re charging way too much for them anyway.”
The cashier didn’t look too happy with Vincent’s reasoning. “Or you can just tell her she forgot the bread and she can come back herself. Just leave.”
Vincent stepped from one foot to the other. He was starting to get annoyed. Obviously the guy needed to make sure he prevented shoplifting in any way possible, but Vincent could tell that that was not the real reason the guy didn’t want Vincent to take the bread. He was simply a selfish and unfriendly person and probably hoped he could keep both the money and the bread.
In one quick, smooth move, Vincent bridged the distance between where he was standing and the counter, snatched the bread out of the shop-owners grip and moved out of reach of the man’s arms.
“If you have even the tiniest amount of decency in you, you’ll give her a discount matching the change you got, the next time she comes here to buy something”, he told the man with as threatening a voice as he could muster. Then he turned around and disappeared through the exit, faster than the shocked cashier could blink.
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Cat was walking down the street so hastily, she kept tripping over her own feet. She felt dizzy, her heart was beating a mile a minute and the blood rushing through her veins gave her the feeling she had an ocean rushing in her ears instead. She could hardly even hear the sound of her own feet hitting the asphalt.
“It was just a newspaper article. It didn’t have anything to do with me. A parking lot is not such an unusual place for people to get shot it, right?” Cat told herself silently. It was just that the whole article had looked so much like the one about her mother’s death. The layout, the picture of the parking cars, the headline. Maybe the people who killed her mum would eventually come back for her after all? She should’ve dropped out of college and mover to her aunt. Or at least changed university and apartment.
“Catherine?”, a deep, throaty voice interrupted her thoughts.
What if that’s them? flashed through her scared mind. No, they wouldn’t announce themselves first, would they?
Cat took a few deep breaths. Slowly, she lifted her head and turned around to where the voice had come from. A few feet behind her stood a tall, very muscular man, although the latter was partially, but not very well hidden by the baggy hoodie he was wearing. He held the plastic bag with the bread in one hand, with the other he pulled back the hood a little, revealing dishevelled brown hair that hung into his face, covering his forehead, and surprisingly soft eyes.
With his stature and military-like stiff and proper posture, he should’ve looked threatening, but somehow he just seemed to radiate calm and safety.
“You forgot to take your bread”, he said and held out the bag for her to take it.
“Thank you”, Cat replied, taken aback by this stranger’s unexpected kindness. She stepped a little closer to grab the bread. The man tilted his head a little and looked slightly to the side, as if he didn’t want her to see the right side of his face. Or maybe she reminded him of someone. Maybe that was why he had felt the need to bring her the bread, but he couldn’t bear to actually look at her. That must be it, Cat concluded.
“Thank you so much!” she repeated. “Today has been a very bad day for me, so this means more than you probably realise.” The stranger nodded like he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“It’s fine, really. It was nothing”, he said quietly.
“Well, I should probably go, my roommate could come home any time now and she’ll wonder what’s taking me so long. I don’t want her to worry”, Cat explained. “And you probably have somewhere to be too, I don’t want to take up any more of your time”, she added quickly
“Yeah. Yes. Of course”, the man mumbled, probably still stunned by the memory of whoever she reminded him of. That person must have been very important to him.
“I hope you’ll have a better day tomorrow”, he said. Then he turned around, pushed his hood forward again, so that it covered his whole face and started to walk back to wherever he had come from with fast steps, yet unusually quietly.
Cat remained in place for a few more seconds. Something about that stranger felt familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. When the man had almost reached the first street corner she finally turned around and continued her walk home. A lot calmer now and for the first time that day - finally - not thinking about her mum’s death.
To that kind stranger it might not have been any more than a forgotten loaf of bread, but to her it was a little light on the darkest of days.